Synopsis

Aidan doesn’t have the best record with
relationships, but he’s had a lifelong love affair with baseball. Player stats
and computer simulations make sense. People don’t. But when he needs a ride to
the World Series, he must rely on another person: a sexy artist who is as
spontaneous as Aidan is predictable.

Jesse doesn’t care about baseball. As an
artist, he'd rather paint a player than watch him at bat. But his grandpa loves
the Kansas City Royals, so he takes him to every home game. He has no idea a
fender bender in the parking lot is about to deliver new inspiration in the
shape of a man with a whole bag of quirks.

Despite their differences, Jesse and
Aidan hit it off, and their sexual chemistry is fantastic. But when Aidan's
numbers betray him, Jesse isn't prepared for the fall-out. If Aidan continues
to put his passion for baseball stats above everything else, he could miss out
on the most important numbers in life: the number of smiles, kisses and laughs
they could share in a lifelong journey together.

Excerpt

Aidan clutched at his hair, heart
hammering in his chest. The front driver’s side of his black Saab was crumpled.
The wheel well took a direct hit, the force of the collision pressing it into
the tire. He could tell from just looking that the axle must be bent, if not
broken, by the way the tire tilted at the wrong angle.

It’s not drivable, he thought, and his
heart hammered harder. He felt his hands trembling, and not as an aftershock of
the accident. Well, not from experiencing the accident, at least. He was
shaking because his plans had just been thrown in the blender.

“Hey, you okay?”

He looked up, gazing blankly at the
figure approaching him. A man, but his features were lost in the shadows. Not
that Aidan could focus on something like facial features right now. That wasn’t
easy on a good day, much less in a moment like this.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he muttered
to himself, as he’d learned from his therapist years ago. “It’s not. It’s not.
But ...” He groaned and clutched at his hair some more. “How am I going to get
to the World Series now? I have to get there!”

He’d wrapped up so many hopes in getting
to that series, in watching the Royals perform in high-stakes games. It was the
perfect time to prove out his math. It might not be rocket science, but Aidan
still wanted to watch his math come to life on the baseball field, in the most
important series of the season. In person.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he
flinched away.

“I’m sorry. Are you hurt?” a voice
asked. A nice, mellow voice. He liked the raspy quality of it and the cadence
of the man’s words. His tone calmed Aidan.

He managed to drag his gaze from the
damage to the man’s face. “I'm ...”

Sexy Artist Guy.

He faltered when he recognized the dark
hair tinted with maroon highlights, dark eyes and sculpted lips — all coming
together in a perfect symmetry. A perfect representation of geometry in nature,
really. And the freckles splashed over his nose, highlighted now by the
security lights overhead? They somehow added to his sex appeal instead of
detracting from it.

Aidan had seen an open sketchbook on
this man’s lap more than once when passing by on a bathroom break. He mostly
drew portraits, from the look of it, but Aidan had only caught a glimpse. It
made sense he was an artist since his entire appearance was like a work of art
to Aidan’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine being so creative with his hair or his
wardrobe or his skin, where Sexy Artist Guy had embraced both tattooing (his
right bicep) and piercing (both ears and right eyebrow).

“I’m so sorry,” Sexy Artist Guy said
again. “I saw an opening and went for it. I didn’t see you coming, but my
grandfather was distracting me—”

“Blame it on the old man, why don’t ya?”
a hoarse voice boomed loudly enough to make Aidan jump.

“Gramps, not now, huh? The guy is
freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Aidan said
sharply. The fascination with the stranger’s face faded as he remembered why he
was in this situation. He gestured to the damage. “There’s no way I can drive
that.”

“We can give you a lift,” the old man
said, at the same time the handsome stranger said, “We’ll call you a tow
truck.”

“But look at my car!” he said, not sure
they understood the direness of the situation.

Artist Guy frowned, then glanced behind
Aidan. Following his look, he realized they were blocking traffic. A line of
cars snaked through the parking lot, headlights shining on Aidan’s personal
disaster.

“I should move my car.” He glanced back
at the bent wheel well, frowning. He hoped he could move the car.

“Jesse,” the old man spoke, “you help
him push. I’ll get in and put it in neutral.”

They all took their positions, and with
some work managed to push the car into an empty space next to the Lincoln
Towncar that had so cruelly crunched the Saab. Aidan cringed at the scraping
metal sound as his car rolled out of the lane of traffic.

Once off to the side, Jesse pulled out
his wallet. He handed his license to Aidan, who stared at it. He took in all
the details: 6-foot-1, 175 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, born one year after
Aidan, making him twenty-six.

Jesse cleared his throat, and Aidan
glanced up.

“Aren’t you going to take a picture?”

Damn. He’d been staring. The old saying
popped into his mind: Take a picture, it’ll last longer.

He flushed. “Sorry.”

He started to hand the license back, but
Jesse looked at him as if he had a screw loose. Then it clicked. Take a
picture. For insurance. Right.

He dug out his phone and clicked the pic
of the license, and then of the insurance card that Jesse handed over. He was
still rattled by the accident, thrumming with bottled-up anxiety.

“Jesse, stop being thick,” the old man
interrupted. “Obviously, he was going to drive up to St. Louis, and a Saab is a
foreign car. He won’t be able to get the parts locally. Maybe not even the
mechanic. They don’t make those cars anymore. He can’t get it fixed in time.”

“Oh.”

“I have to go to that game. I go to all
the away games within driving distance. I always do. And this is the World
Series. I'm going to have to take a bus, and, oh God, I can’t stand to ride the
bus—”

“Jesse will drive you.”

Aidan looked at the older man. He had a
bushy head of white hair and enough wrinkles to give a Shar-Pei a run for its
money, but his tone was confident, the kind of confident that brooked no
nonsense. He’d heard that tone from his own mother too many times to count.

“He will?”

“I will?” Jesse echoed. “Gramps, I’m
sure Aidan doesn’t want—”

“That would be great!”

Normally, Aidan wouldn’t want to ride
long distance with a stranger, but when contrasted with a bus full of
strangers, he jumped at the opportunity. Besides, Jesse and his grandfather had
been at every home game. If Jesse were some kind of predator or bully, he'd
have shown it by now. Right?

He’d only had one other interaction with
Jesse. He’d walked up to Aidan once, when he was trying to quickly record the
stats from the latest play and compare them against what he’d predicted for
that player’s performance. Aidan had been too distracted to make conversation,
especially small talk with a stranger. But he couldn’t help noticing his great
smile. Jesse was one of those people who smiled with his whole being, not just
his mouth. His eyes brightened, his cheeks dimpled and his body even seemed to
vibrate with happy energy.

Aidan liked that because it was easy to
see Jesse’s happiness. It wasn’t subtle, which would be lost on him, or
confusing — like when people’s mouths smiled but their eyes stayed cold. He
didn’t understand that. Was he supposed to respond to their mouth or their
eyes? And then there were some people who just smiled all the time, even when
they said mean things. What did that mean? Smiles could be confusing, but
Jesse’s wasn’t.

“I have tickets to the games,” Gramps
was saying now. “I was going to ask you to go, as a favor to me.”

“What? But you said in the car—”

“Hush,” Gramps said, a gleam in his eye.
“I’m not up for that kind of travel. I want you to go in my place, so you can
tell me all about it. You take this nice young man. It’s the least we can do.
Watch the games for me, and tell me all about it when you come home.”

Aidan pulled out his phone to call the
tow truck, watching the two men in a staring stand-off. He made arrangements
for the tow and disconnected in time to see Jesse sigh and nod.

“Okay, Gramps. For you.”

“Good boy,” Gramps said, clapping him on
the shoulder.

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Meet the Author

DJ Jamison grew up in the Midwest and worked in newsrooms for more than 10 years, which came in handy when she began writing stories centered on a series of love connections between small-town Kansas newspaper staffers, their sources and their readers. It was the perfect entrance into the world of fiction, and she has since branched out into ERs, health clinics and other settings to tell the stories of characters who are flawed but loveable. She writes a variety of queer characters, from gay to bisexual to asexual, with a focus on telling love stories that are more about common ground than lust at first sight. DJ is married with two sons and two glow-in-the-dark fish that are miraculously still alive.